Mixing up words when speaking is many people’s problem. They look for medical names for it on the net, yet find none, because it boils down to a simple phenomenon described in this article. How can NLP help?

The problem:

I’ve always talked really fast and stuttered when I spoke because I get really excited when I’m telling a story or trying to get my point across. Being from the south, home remedies and explanations sometimes take over and my grandma calls it Mix Up Mash Up and says it’s a sign of being smart. So I’ve never paid it any attention until I got in a serious relationship. I don’t know if it got worse or if a new person wasn’t used to it. Nonetheless, she started pointing it out every time it happened.

So I started researching a medical name for it – not getting caught up in labels, just curious – and didn’t find one. And that led me to come across another reader’s question to you on another site. I don’t always realize when I do it. I think I said the sentence ” Is the cake in the oven?”, and they’ll hear “Is the oven in the cake?”. Most of the time others have to tell me that I mixed it up. I know it’s my brain working faster than my mouth. When I write, I think the sentence and write it. And when I reread the sentence I see that I missed a word or wrote a word twice. I want to hear your thoughts and advice on it all…

The solution:

My advice is this: you’re simply not connecting your speech to your brain. You’re on chronic autopilot. So chronic that the electric impulse [metaphorically as much as literally] between your speech and your brain REALIZING what you’re saying is not occurring due to the automation of the autopilot! Just stop, reread, and think about what you read in this paragraph. You’ll see that it’ll make sense.

It’s interesting how the human race has been spellbound by the power of the medical profession! Look at how its spell worked on you: what did you do first? You searched for the medical name of your issue! Yes, you were curious, not caught up in the labels, but if you weren’t caught up in the labels, why would you be curious? That’s how the Western society is caught up in labels! I wonder how much energy you spent on not finding your issue’s medical name that you could have spent on thinking about how to correct the issue. This is an observation.

The electric impulse of realization

Now back to the electric impulse between what you’re doing and your brain realizing your actions. I’ll give you an example that may make you and other readers cringe, but beautifully illustrates my point. Have you ever visited the restroom at night? If yes, have you ever had a split second moment while doing your business when you hesitated whether you really were in the restroom and not in a dream?

If you have had this happen, you’ll know that once the split second passes, your brain will kick up such strong impulse of realization that you’ll frighten yourself realizing that you lost control over knowing whether you really were sitting there or not! You’ll then automatically – as a matter of reflex – ground yourself to the toilet or floor and check yourself, perhaps look around, to assure yourself that you really are in the restroom.

By this time you’ll be wide awake! THAT split second is due exactly to lack of the electric impulse between your action and the brain realizing the action! That impulse is also the element that people with dementia are missing. It’s again simply autopilot – who thinks about going to the restroom at night three quarters asleep when nature calls? One has to act, right? We act on reflex without realization. But it’s the lack of realization that causes autopilots and brainwash to a certain extent, no matter how harsh or offensive that may sound.

Be a pilot, not autopilot

Start practicing realizing what you’re saying when you speak. Ground yourself and practice. Your brain must register what you say. Then you’ll start hearing yourself and the issue of mixing up words will cease. I also suggest that you thank your partner for pointing this out to you. Take your partner’s feedback as an opportunity to catch yourself and practice the electric impulse of realization again when you catch yourself. Your partner’s feedback is a helpful barometer of how well you’re doing! And of course, realizing what you say must only help reduce stuttering, right?

If the issue described in this article affects you or someone you know, you may be inspired to get more help. Let’s talk about it.